The Denver clerk and recorder said today she plans to send ballots to inactive voters for the Nov. 1 election despite a threat from the secretary of state to take her to court.

The flap pits the state’s most powerful Democratic county against Colorado’s new Republican secretary of state, Scott Gessler.

“The City and County of Denver has consistently provided all eligible voters with ease of access to the voting franchise and we plan to continue to do so,” clerk Debra Johnson said today in a statement.

Gessler’s office said the law limits the mailings to active voters only.

“It’s clear under state law that counties can only mail to active registered voters,” spokesman Rich Coolidge said.

Coolidge cited the law’s language that says, “the designated election official shall mail to each active registered elector” to support Gessler’s threat.

But Denver disagrees with Gessler’s interpretation, as does the Pueblo County clerk and recorder and Colorado Common Cause.

In a letter to Johnson, Judd Choate, Gessler’s elections director, warned if Denver “disobeyed this order,” a complaint would be filed in Denver District Court on Tuesday.

At issue are voters labeled “inactive/failed to vote” because they skipped the 2010 election and did not respond to postcards from their county clerks asking them to activate their registrations.

Denver has 236,410 active voters and 55,023 voters in the “inactive/failed to vote” category.

Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert Ortiz said his office also was planning on mailing ballots to both categories of voters.

“I just feel like not mailing ballots to everyone is disenfranchising voters, and I made the decision months ago not to do that,” he said today.

Ortiz added he is waiting to see what happens if Gessler sues Denver as threatened.

Jenny Rose Flanagan, director of Colorado Common Cause, was critical of Gessler.

“I think he’s picking the wrong fight,” she said. “These voters are eligible to vote and when we give them ballots, they vote.”

Those votes, she said, can be a game-changer. She pointed to Denver’s recent municipal election.

In the June mayoral runoff, 6,138 voters in the “inactive/failed to vote” category returned mail-in ballots, said elections spokesman Alton Dillard.

The state legislature passed a law in 2008 requiring county clerks to mail ballots to inactive voters in the 2009-2010 election cycle. That was because county clerks in 2010 for the first time had the option of using only a mail-ballot election for the primary, said the sponsor, former state Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver.

“I’ve always been about making it easier for people to vote,” Gordon said.

Although the law wasn’t reauthorized, Johnson and Ortiz argued that clerks still have the option of mailing ballots to inactive voters.

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